


Do You Have Something To Tell Me?

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Jefferson finds out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 10:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17444768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Jefferson puts the pieces together.





	Do You Have Something To Tell Me?

Contrary to what some people seemed to believe, Mrs. Davis raised no fools. Once Jefferson finished the delicate operation of getting the Kingpin lowered by _industrial crane_ (because hanging criminals over forty feet in the air was obnoxious enough, but Spider-Man had to go and do it with someone who outweighed a sofa) he had time to think. Think about several things.

Thing one: the new Spider-Man was a _kid._ The fake-deep voice wasn’t fooling anyone.

Thing two: Spider-Man went out of his way to disguise his accent (also not fooling anyone), implying there was something that someone might recognize.

Thing three: Miles had known, without being told, that Aaron was dead. There had been a small Spider-Man in the alley with Aaron, and Jefferson was intuitively certain that it was the same one who had fought the Kingpin.

Thing four: the writing on the note that Spider-Man left on the Kingpin looked familiar. Maybe Jefferson didn’t pay enough attention to Miles’s art ambitions, but he had seen enough of those stickers to be somewhat familiar with the lettering style.

Thing five: Spider-Man had said, “I love you.”

Adding them together . . . came out in a crazy place, but Jefferson wasn’t willing to dismiss it just because it was crazy. The whole week had been crazy.

“Do you have something to tell me?” he asked Miles at dinner, that weekend.

Miles looked startled and shifty, in a way people only manage when they’re desperately trying to look innocent. “Um, no?”

“Are you sure? Because that sounded like a question.”

“No—I mean, yes! Yes, I’m sure.”

“All right. But if you do want to tell me something, I’m here for you. And I don’t just mean I’ll listen, I mean _I’m here for you._ You understand?”

Miles gave him a fake salute and said, “That’s a copy,” in what was probably supposed to be a (bad) imitation of Jefferson himself.

He asked Spider-Man the same question, the next time he saw him. Spider-Man had caught a jumper, and stuck around for the police to make it clear that the person was not a criminal, and not dangerous, despite the excessive level of webbing wrapped around him. “I didn’t just want to leave a note,” Spider-Man concluded. “He’s been through a lot, and honestly if I could punch his parents—“

“Don’t,” Jefferson said. “And don’t tell me about it. Stuff like this, there’s confidentiality to worry about.” Although confidentiality of this sort was more Rio’s department than Jefferson’s. “You may not wear a badge, but if you’re going to be out here doing this—and I’m _still_ not comfortable with that—you have to make rules for yourself, and follow them.” He took a deep breath. “Do you have something to tell me?”

Spider-Man disappeared into thin air.

“Oh, come _on!”_ Jefferson said.

All in all, it was five weeks—five weekends with Miles, several Spider-Man incidents that Jefferson wasn’t called to—before the thing came to a head. In another one of those New York crises that made insurance adjusters into heavy drinkers.

Jefferson didn’t expect Spider-Man to come when he flagged him down, but he did. “What’s the situation, Officer?” Still fake adult voice, still fake accent.

“Special Containment is on its way,” Jefferson told him. “You don’t have to go out there.”

“I’ll be fine, Officer. Thank you for worrying about me.”

Everyone else was extremely busy with the perimeter, so Jefferson steered Spider-Man into an alley. “What I mean,” he said, “is that _I_ don’t want you to go out there. God knows how, but the Lizard is twelve feet tall this time.”

“This is what I do,” Spider-Man said. He jumped up onto the wall of the alley. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

_“Miles, I don’t want you out there with that thing!”_

Spider-Man disappeared.

The air said, in a somewhat choked voice, “How did you—“

“I am _not an idiot,”_ Jefferson said. “Un-disappear yourself and come down here _right now,_ young man, you are _grounded.”_

There was a short silence.

Then a small thump, and Spider-Man reappeared on the ground. “Dad,” he said, in a small voice, “I’ve read Peter’s files. The Lizard doesn’t want to be like this. She’s just a person who made one really stupid decision and has to deal with this Jekyll and Hyde sh—thing ruining her life. And your guys are setting up _missile launchers._ They’re going to kill her. An innocent woman who isn’t in control of any of this. Are you really good with that?”

“Of course I’m not good with that!” Jefferson snapped, and made a conscious effort to soften his voice. “But, Miles—“

“I can take her.”

“She’s throwing cars!”

“Yeah, and I can dodge them! If I do this, nobody will have to die today, and nobody will have to kill anyone today. And I can do this. I promise I can. Dad, _trust me.”_

Jefferson looked at him, at a loss. He was so small. He was just too _small._

He was also Miles. And he was brilliant. And Jefferson had promised himself that he was going to work hard not to get in the way of that brilliance, and to help whenever he could, and— “If you think for a second that the fight isn’t going your way, you get out of there and leave it to us. Understand?”

Miles hugged him quickly, then skittered up the wall. “Thank you. I love you.”

“And you’re telling your mother the minute we get—“

Spider-Man was gone.

Jefferson took a deep breath, and another. They didn’t help much. Then he went out and got back to work chasing off the idiots with the cellphone cameras.

The fight with the Lizard went more or less the way Miles had predicted. The electricity thing—Spider-Man had nicknamed it his venom shock—didn’t work on the Lizard, but being kicked in the head repeatedly _did._ Eventually she shrank back to an ordinary woman with an empty sleeve, and the PDNY moved in.

Jefferson spent most of the fight thinking of things he wanted to say to Miles. Including _you’re grounded_ and _please be all right_ and _all right, you’re not actually grounded, just stop giving me a heart attack._ But mostly he was trying to adjust to the reality, rather than just the idea, of his son having superpowers. Capable of sticking to walls, or becoming invisible, or grabbing a twelve foot tall reptile by the tail and spinning her straight into the side of a building so hard that the facing cracked and tumbled down on top of her.

How did you teach someone with superpowers? What guidance could Jefferson give him? It was unfamiliar territory.

Rio took it better than Jefferson. Or, at least, Rio didn’t get the shakes after the fight was done, which Jefferson had gone to great lengths to conceal from his fellow officers. She did say some words that she ordered Miles to forget instantly. And she hugged him, and she held onto him, and finally she went and got some of her old textbooks and thumped them down in front of him.

“You,” she said, “are going to learn anatomy. And first aid.”

Miles blinked at her. “I am?”

“You need to know where it’s safe to hit someone, and you need to know what to do if you find someone who’s badly hurt. And,” she swallowed, “you need to know when you have to go to a hospital, and when it’s safe to come back here to me.”

“You are also,” Jefferson said, “going to learn exactly how police procedure works, and _why_ it works like that. The rules exist for a reason. I won’t try to tell you that they’re perfect, or perfectly followed, but people have been working at this since long before you were born.”

Miles rolled his eyes, put his head back, and looked at the ceiling. “Can I _please_ just be grounded?”

“Not a chance.”


End file.
